I Regret To Inform You That Anastasia Is Now A Disney Princess

Anastasia, produced and released in 1997 specifically as a challenge to Disney’s animation domination, is now part of the Disney empire and now available to stream on Disney+.

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Anastasia, played by Meg Ryan in the Don Bluth and Gary Goldman-directed feature, was not supposed to be a Disney Princess. The very point of the film’s existence, way back in November of 1997, was for the Fox
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toon to act as a challenger to Disney’s current (then and now) domination of big-scale animated feature films, specifically the kind of fairy tale princess musicals personified by The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and (to a lesser extent) Pocahontas and Aladdin. It was a splashy, big-budget musical that very much played like a Mad Libs variation of the stereotypical Broadway-inspired Disney blockbuster of the moment. It was meant to show that Disney wasn’t the only studio in town that could do what Disney did so well. So, it is with a heavy heart that I note that Anastasia is now available to stream on Disney+.

Fox’s Anastasia followed Disney’s revitalizing success with The Little Mermaid ($84 million domestic in 1989), Beauty and the Beast ($331 million worldwide in 1991 and the first animated film to snag a Best Picture nomination), Aladdin ($504 million worldwide, behind only E.T., Star Wars, Ghost and Terminator 2, in 1992) and The Lion King ($858 million worldwide in 1994, behind only Jurassic Park globally, in 1994). While the post-Lion King output (Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules) had comparatively “fallen to Earth” (even Toy Story would “only” earn $365 million worldwide in 1995), it was still a lucrative market especially when you accounted for merchandising and post-theatrical lifespans. Meanwhile, Don Bluth would recover from failed attempts to start his own Disney-like animation empire (The Secret of Nymph was a cult favorite but not a huge hit) via a team-up with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin at Universal.

Bluth’s The Land Before Time and An American Tail each earned around $48 million domestic in 1986 and 1988 and becoming the biggest non-Disney
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toons ever at the time. Bluth was not involved with American Tail: Fievel Goes West ($40 million worldwide), but its modest success opening almost concurrently with Beauty and the Beast in November of 1991 was a definitive “have” and “have-not” comparison. The less said about Rock-A-Doodle, Thumbelina, A Troll in Central Park and The Pebble and the Penguin the better. Now aligned with Fox, Bluth’s Anastasia was aimed at the heart of the Disney empire. It featured all the hallmarks of a Waking Sleeping Beauty-era Disney toon, including rousing musical numbers (“Once Upon a September”), kid-friendly animal sidekicks (Bartok the bat), over-the-top villains (an undead Rasputin), action scenes out of a “live-action movie” (the second-act train crash) and the expected happily-ever-after royal romance.

Based (very loosely) on the Romanov family massacre that sparked the Russian Revolution and led to what we would then know as the U.S.S.R., Anastasia uses the oft-discussed legend of a surviving daughter as a springboard for an almost hilariously “Disney-ish” animated musical romance. Starring Meg Ryan as the title character and John Cusack as the con artist turned-suitor attempting to claim a ten million-ruble reward by finding an Anastasia look-alike. Yes, through coincidence and fate, the 20-year-old Dimitri (who actually helped the young girl escape ten years ago) stumbles upon Anya, an amnesiac 18-year-old who (spoilers) turns out to be the genuine article. It may be a Disney copy, but it’s a good one (Christopher Lloyd’s villain tune “In the Dark of the Night” is a headbanger), with Anastasia ironically more of a traditional fairy tale heroine than Disney’s “not your normal Disney princess” heroines.

It was very much publicized in the run-up to release as a very real attempt to displace the Disney animation monopoly. It even opened a week early in one theater ($120,540) just as Disney had done via the El Capitan since Beauty and the Beast six years prior. Disney responded by re-releasing The Little Mermaid into wide release the same week Anastasia platformed, a strategy of taking competitive cheap shots (did Disney have to launch Soul on the same day as Wonder Woman 1984?) that continues today. They “celebrated” the release of DreamWorks’s The Prince of Egypt by offering a new set of crowd-pleasing bloopers with existing prints of A Bug’s Life. Anastasia earned decent reviews but shockingly (?) didn’t open all that well. It placed second that weekend to, uh, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation ($16.7 million, well below its predecessor’s $23 million debut in August of 1995).

Anastasia’s wide $14 million launch was considered a moderate success, and it earned $11.8 million (-16%) over its second Fri-Sun weekend. Fox and Disney would square off that Thanksgiving with Disney’s Flubber trouncing Fox’s Alien: Resurrection. Anastasia would earn $53 million domestic and $139 million worldwide on a $50 million budget (back when marketing was cheaper and movies like this lived forever on VHS). It was the biggest non-Disney Hollywood toon ever until Antz and Prince of Egypt in late 1998. We wouldn’t get a $200 million-plus domestic-grossing non-Disney/non-DreamWorks toon until Illumination’s Despicable Me in 2010. The assimilation of Anastasia into the Disney hive (resistance is, as they say, futile) is especially tragic. The very thing that made Anastasia stand out both during its initial release and over the last two decades of cult popularity is that it wasn’t a Disney movie and Anastasia wasn’t a Disney Princess.

That’s not to make Disney the villain. Comcast
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likely would have bought Fox had Disney declined. It’s another example of Disney now profiting from the success of art that was often specifically made as competition. Netflix
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plays a similar game when they take thirty-party shows (Cobra Kai, You, Lucifer, etc.) and turn them into “Netflix sensations.” The Greatest Showman thrived alongside The Last Jedi (which scored thanks partially to the successes of the prior Fox-distributed Star Wars movies). Home Alone was once the third-biggest domestic grosser ever. Ice Age and Night at the Museum were hugely successful family-friendly franchises that rivaled Disney. In a generation, will anyone remember that Iron Man came from Paramount
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, that Willow came from MGM and that Avatar came from Fox? Anastasia existed explicitly to challenge Disney’s monopoly on top-tier animation. It’s now another Disney toon with its heroine now another Disney Princess.

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